Need Another Reason To Ditch Fried Food? Study Says Climate Change Could Be A Good One

Just when you think fried food couldn’t be on the receiving end of any more bad publicity, a recent Berkeley National Laboratory study found that climate change could be one more drawback. According to a November 2017 article from FoodDrive.com, the fat droplets that are released during cooking “form complex structures” that can in turn “attract moisture and create clouds” as well as rainy weather. Per the report, this cloud formation “could have implications for climate change.” The researchers surmised that weather can be affected as moisture is absorbed into the air and the chemical reactions caused by deep frying food are a possible culprit. “We know that the complex structures we saw are formed by similar fatty acid molecules like soap in water. There, they dramatically affect whether the mixture is cloudy or transparent, solid or liquid, and how much it absorbs moisture from the atmosphere in a lab,” a University of Reading biophysics associate professor told The Telegraph newspaper.

Take the above with a grain of salt, if you’ll excuse the pun, but the health hazards of fried food are well-documented. That’s because fried foods are cooked with an excess of oils derived from vegetables, nuts or other plants. In one tablespoon of corn oil, which is a cheap and effective ingredient when it comes to deep frying, there are 14 grams of fat. Figure that many, many tablespoons are in your favorite restaurant’s deep fryer and the added calories thanks to oil start to mount. There’s an at-home solution, however, and it’s perks are being picked up by those who enjoy cooking healthy meals for family, friends and themselves. It’s called the Power Air Fryer and as the name implies, it uses super-heated air that’s rapidly circulated in all directions to “fry” the foods inside. That means you’ll have a brown, crunchy and crispy final product – just like what would be rendered by a deep fryer – but it contains little to none of the calories added by oil. In fact, oil is only used in a Power Air Fryer as a mist for flavoring purposes.

Many erroneously think that a Power Air Fryer is only good for replicating finger-food appetizers and while we recognize the misconception, it couldn’t be further from the truth. That’s because this appliance is a dehydrator, rotisserie and baking option combined. With this arsenal of preparation options available, at-home cooks can craft everything from French fries to roast chicken – all without the added calorie counts caused by fat-laden cooking oil.